The authors take on a problem that many departments in Sweden, not least in the humanities, are dealing with right now: language. They show how social status in academia is decoupled from linguistic integration, at least if we understand status in terms of academic titles. Feelings of insufficiency and incompleteness are, however, prevalent, even among those whose Swedish proficiency is objectively very high. The authors underline the value of language, how competence in English, Swedish, and other languages is crucial for academics’ possibilities to work and build careers.

The migrants’ and their descendants’ presence in leading positions in Europe is full of tensions and does not develop at the same pace in all professional fields. This project explores such processes of establishment in present-day Sweden, in academia and cultural production as the two fields in which migrants have the highest representation in leading positions in public institutions.

This project contributes to the emerging cross-European debate and research on the ‘postmigrant’ condition that acknowledges antagonistic positions towards migration, and struggles about participation and representation, but also highlights new alliances that are not reduced to origin or heritage.

Our empirical interest is directed at the paths to recognition and professional influence of people who self-identify as migrants or migrant descendants and work as university teachers and researchers on the one hand, and as authors, cultural journalists and professionals in performing arts on the other.

Spanning ethnology, migration and literary studies, the project explores different constellations of alliances between migrants, their descendants and ‘natives’, with a particular interest in the role of friendship. It addresses issues of professional influence and public visibility and asks how they differ in the two fields. It also brings insights into the under-explored Arabic language-based cultural field in Sweden.

Gitt forståelsen av integrering som en mangfoldig prosess som kan romme mange ulike praksiser og aktører, diskuterer vi integrasjon som en prosess der mennesker «sikrer sted». Vi utforsker flyktningers integreringsfortellinger, for å forstå hvilke integreringserfaringer disse rommer. Rammeverket til Penninx og Garcés-Mascareñas (2016) brukes til å analysere flyktningers fortellinger om integrering inn i et lokalsamfunn. Gjennom disse erfaringene viser vi et mangfold av integreringsforståelser og praksiser.

While understanding integration as a diverse process embedded in a variety of practices and involving different actors, the authors of this chapter employ Penninx and Garcés- Mascareñas’ (2016) understanding of integration as a process of “securing one’s place”. The chapter points to the diversity of the ways in which integration is understood and practiced. The analysis dwells on social relations perceived as important and explores how these are linked to perceptions of integration into a local community in Southern Norway.

During the 1992–95 war, the vast majority of people in Bosnia and Herzegovina relied on international humanitarian assistance for survival. Material goods sent as humanitarian aid were crucial to the civilians trapped in Sara-jevo under siege. This chapter presents what some of the residents remember and how they talk about it two decades later. The analysis pursues how the act of narration of a particular person–object interaction activates corporeal memories and establishes affective links – resonances in the body and mind – between then (when the experience was acquired) and now (when one narrates it), between what the research participants talked about (their humanitarian aid-related experiences), and how they talked about it (affects that were revived in the course of narration). The vivid descriptions of sensual experiences concerning humanitarian aid – the tastes and smells of food and feel of clothing items received from distant donors – witness to the lingering sensual effects those experiences still have today.

With the 2015 refugee migration and its aftermath as a main reference and focal point, this anthology uses Conviviality as a lens to examine the current challenges to democracy. Conviviality and the inter-related concepts Cosmopolitanism and Creolisation are assumed to provide tools for analysis as well as forms for “cross-cutting communication”. Originally introduced by Ivan Illich (1973), conviviality was re-launched and re-defined by Paul Gilroy (2004) against a backdrop of social, racial and religious tensions in post-imperial Britain, denoting an ability to be at ease in the presence of diversity without restaging communitarian conceptions of ethnic and racial difference, and has subsequently been refined to provide “an analytical tool to ask and explore in what ways, and under what conditions, people constructively create modes of togetherness” (Nowicka & Vertovec 2014: 2). In Gilroy’s understanding conviviality was a substitute for cosmopolitanism, which in his view had been hijacked as a pretext for Western “supposedly benign imperialism” in the aftermath of 9/11 and the war on terror (Gilroy 2004: 66). But rather than replacing one concept with the other, this anthology seeks to explore the interconnections – commonalities and differences – between cosmopolitanism and conviviality. Creolisation is the other supplementary concept, by constituting a valid alternative to conventional interpretations of cross-cultural contact and allowing agency and influence to hitherto marginal and subordinate cultures and peoples (Cohen and Toninato 2010).

The introductory chapter discusses conviviality in relation to the adjoining concepts cosmopolitanism and creolisation. Inspired by the Spanish term convivencia, Ivan Illich envisioned a post-industrial convivial society of “autonomous individuals and primary groups” (Illich 1973), which resembles present-day manifestations of “convivialism”. Paul Gilroy refashioned conviviality as a substitute for cosmopolitanism, denoting an ability to be ‘at ease’ in contexts of diversity (Gilroy 2004). Rather than replacing one concept with the other, this book seeks to explore the interconnections—commonalities and differences—between them. The urgency of today’s global predicament is the recurring argument in the discussion of all three concepts, and a further reason to bring them in dialogue. Whereas conviviality and cosmopolitanism are already tightly intertwined, creolisation is arguably a necessary complement to the other two.

The article tackles the question of how place matters to migrant physicians in the regions of Agder in Norway and Skåne in Sweden by exploring how place-specific conditions affect their experiences in the work, private, family and social domains of life. For this purpose, the article uses thematic analysis of the narrative material gathered through 25 semi-structured interviews. The lens of work/non-work domains, combined with a practice-oriented approach to place, highlights the complexity of lived experiences as they evolve in a particular context. Three main findings are identified: the non-homogenous significance of place across life domains, the vital role of transborder connections and obligations that affect individual and family resources for work/non-work negotiations in the place of settlement and the limits to the skill-based privileges in the place of settlement, which are notable in the domain of work but not replicated in non-work domains.

This chapter contributes to the literature that seeks to understand the social and political developments of Refugees Welcome initiatives beyond the immediacy of 2015 “crisis”. Based on interviews conducted in 2018 with activists who hold leading positions in the national umbrella organisation Refugees Welcome Sweden, the chapter presents the analysis of their perceptions and self-reflections on engagement with refugees and on working for a humane asylum politics. It exemplifies how the moral and political dimensions of cosmopolitanism are intertwined in pointing to the universal aim of equality and at the same time demanding that it is realised locally. While none of our interviewees employed the notion of cosmopolitanism, they outlined a normative order that emerges as a political project towards a reconstruction of society along lines of equality and justice.